"DIDN'T NEED NO WELFARE STATE"

Though Edith and Arch sang the opening song about the 1920s, the show took place during its times, the 1970s.

For those who lived through those years, the 70s were a mixed time. Some of the best rock music came from 70s — Pink Floyd's Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals; Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street; the Clash's London Calling.

Some of the best movies came from the 70s — Star Wars, Dirty Harry, Jaws, Rocky.

Yet, the 70s were a low point in American, Canadian, Australian and British history. Years of government ownership of industries and excessive regulation in markets held living standards low.

The 70s were the years of syndicalism — a mix of socialism, unionism and oligopoly industrialism. The 70s were an ugly time.

Energy was expensive. People couldn't afford cotton so they wore polyester. Heavy-handed car unions led to horribly made and unreliable cars compared to earlier times.

The college university Ph.D. preached plans for poor blacks and Hispanics. Thus, bureaucrats corralled them like in animals in free-to-them welfare housing, called projects. The Projects were crime-infested war zones.

Graffiti was written everywhere, on everything, Already overpaid union workers went on strike often. Garbage piled on the streets of the cities.

Politicians of the 1960s had stuck Americans into a horrible, useless war against the Vietnamese. As most know, 58,000 Americans were killed, many forced to fight as they were drafted by crazed politicians to fight an unneeded war.

People tried to escape through sexual swinging and transcendental meditation. They tried to escape through psychedelia music first and then through disco and later through punk rock angst.

Mostly though, people escaped then as they do today, through television. CBS aired a show called All in the Family starring Carroll O'Conner as Archie Bunker, who represented old America, the white male past, playing a white-haired clown-bigot who lacked a university degree.

His son-in-law, Mike Stivic played by Hollywood TV royalty Rob Reiner represented progressive America. Mike was hip. Mike was university educated. Mike had colored friends who know were calledblacks.

Actress Jean Stapleton played Edith Bunker, the daft, supportive housewife of Archie's. Edith represented American Christians, as she played the simpleton who chimed in with well-meaning comments from a loving, kind-heart. Those Were The Days——————Boy, the way Glenn Miller played!Songs that made the Hit Parade.Guys like us, we had it made.Those were the days!

And you knew where you were then.Girls were girls and men were men.Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Didn't need no welfare state.Everybody pulled his weight.Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.Those were the days!——

The Roaring 20s might have been the times for some, but the Herbert Hoover 1930s were horrible. Hoover, a tremendous meddler, instituted crazed policies caused the Great Depression. Later, FDR tripled-down upon on Hoover's crazed meddling, doing what Hoover had done but on a scale comparable to the Hoover Dam.